Post-harvest conservation food Development of weaning foods with high caloric density and low hot-paste viscosity using traditional technologies

The usefulness of weaning foods to meet the needs of
children being weaned from a liquid, milk-based diet
to a solid or semi-solid diet is now well recognized, and
several weaning foods have been developed in different
parts of the world. Such foods should be nutritionally well
balanced, and should have a soft texture with a very low
fibre content. Most of them are pre-cooked, roller-dried
mixtures based on blends of cereals, legumes, or other
protein-rich foods with varying proportions of milk
solids, and they are fortified with vitamins and minerals.
A weaning-food requirement now being emphasized
is a high caloric density per unit volume of food. This can
be effected by reducing the viscosity of the product being
fed to children. Customary weaning foods are starchy and
gelatinized and have a high paste viscosity when mixed
with cold or hot water prior to feeding. Modifications of
starch-paste viscosity can be accomplished by suitable
adjustment of the processing conditions, or by enzymatic
modification of the starch.
In formulating such weaning foods for use in the
developing countries, the processing modification for
reducing viscosity of the starch-base mix should be simple
and cheap, and should fit into the traditional culinary
and child-feeding practices of the region. In this context,
a preliminary study was made on the effects of different
traditional heat-processing operations on the paste
viscosity of cereal flours. As malting or germination is
well known to have both saccharifying and dextrinogenic
(viscosity-reducing) effects on starch, this process was
also included for comparison. The heat-processing
operations included toasting, sand roasting, parboiling,
steaming under pressure, and flaking. Commonly used
cereals and millets as well as a typical legume were used
in the study.